Ruxandra Grrr ’s Reviews > James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon > Status Update

Julie Phillips, noooo

"'With Delicate Mad Hands' is often heavy-handed. The men are too rotten, the heroine too abused, and the action sequences much too long for the story’s delicate payoff. There are too many technical details of retrothrusters, course computers, and oxygen levels. Where Alli had used the apparatus of science fiction to say something new, now she was hiding behind it."

Amazing how a reader's essay about Tiptree's stories gave her more insight about her core wounds than her (very limited 70s) therapist.

Ursula was afraid of Joanna Russ's anger (in The Female Man), in 1975, but I am happy that she embraced rage in Tehanu, two decades later.

"Yet the world of 'Houston' (Houston, We Have a Problem) is almost oppressively cozy" - Is it though? Is it oppressively cozy? I disagree with that interpretation also.

Fucking juicy: Tiptree had intense letters and relationships at a distance with both Le Guin and Joanna Russ and when Russ's rage would put him off, he would go gossip about her to Le Guin. Not cool, Tiptree!

(using the pronouns for Tiptree that the book uses, aka 'he' when we're talking Tiptree, 'she' when we're talking Alice / Alli.)

"Are we meant to hate Don? Surely not: he is too likable, and too much like Alli’s own alter ego, Tiptree."

Ummmmm, I read The Women Men Don't See twice and never once liked Don, actually. I'm confused whenever some critic says that her male protagonists are nice guys, because they always feel like NICE GUYS TM to me. So I very much disagree with Phillips here.

Letter flirting between Ursula Le Guin and James Tiptree Jr. is adorable.

Joseph W. Campbell, oblivious af:

"Campbell told Tiptree his premise was implausible: two interdependent forms of the same species had to be symbiotic, not competitive."

It's amazing reading this and realizing how so much of Tiptree's vibe that I love is her being super horny for women and having no idea what to do with that!

"As you know, I cast love overboard a thousand times only to fish it back."